KunstenaarSwedish
Waldemar Sjölander
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Waldemar Sjölander's career is defined by a restless crossing of borders - between countries, between media, and between artistic communities that rarely overlapped. Born in Gothenburg on January 6, 1908, as Gustav Waldemar Sjölander Johnson, he grew up the son of an engineer and inventor. His early training took him first to the Free School of Fine Arts under Albert Edh, then to Valand Art School under Tor Bjurström, where he joined the circle that would come to be known as the Gothenburg Colourists. This loose group of painters worked with lyrical, experimental color in ways that departed sharply from the prevailing academic tradition in Sweden.
By the mid-1940s Sjölander had established enough of a reputation at home to hold solo exhibitions at the Olsen Art Gallery (1944) and the Modern Art Gallery (1945 and 1946). These shows gave him a platform, but he was already looking outward. Shortly after World War II he emigrated to Mexico, a move that would define the rest of his life and work. The muralist giants Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco took an interest in the arriving Swede and helped arrange his first Mexican solo exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1948, followed by a second in 1950 to favorable reviews.
In Mexico, Sjölander worked across an unusually wide range of forms. In painting he used oils with the color sensibility he had developed as a Colourist. His printmaking practice covered etching, drypoint, lithography, and monotype - and he reportedly designed over 500 of the tools he used himself, a detail that speaks to how seriously he engaged with the technical dimension of his craft. Sculpture rounded out the work: reliefs and three-dimensional pieces in plaster, bronze, and wood, with wood his most expressive sculptural medium.
He taught for many years at two of Mexico's most important art institutions - the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" from 1971 to 1985, and the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas from 1977 to 1985. His work entered permanent collections at the Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Museum, and the Tessin Museum in Paris, as well as institutions in Mexico. He died in Mexico on March 18, 1988.
On the Swedish auction market, Sjölander appears most often at houses in Gothenburg and Stockholm - Göteborgs Auktionsverk accounts for the largest share of his sales. His works in the database run from oils on canvas to drawings, with figurative subjects including portraits, figures, and still lifes. Prices have ranged from around 1,400 to 3,700 SEK, reflecting the modest but consistent interest his work attracts at regional Swedish houses.